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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848387">Bring Me These Drugstore Heroin Dreams</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenscaie/pseuds/Elenscaie'>Elenscaie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Coda, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Gen, Hallucinations, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Drugs, Stream of Consciousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:41:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,430</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23848387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenscaie/pseuds/Elenscaie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A hospital is the last place Spencer wants to be in. He'd make a break for it right then and there. He would, if not for his mind staggering up after his intentions like a broken leg without the crutches.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Morgan &amp; Emily Prentiss &amp; Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan &amp; Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss &amp; Spencer Reid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>106</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bring Me These Drugstore Heroin Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Spencer shifts in his hospital bed and does his best to ignore the indignity of being bared from the back down. The gown itself is only a little bit scratchy but it’s enough to irritate him. The texture makes him grimace and he turns to the side, presses his cheek to the pillow; his curls slide, sweat-slick, along his forehead. He wants to shut his eyes against the gleam-flare of the lights.<br/>
<br/>
The fixtures here are fluorescent white bulbs built into the ceiling. Impartial and impersonal, suffusing the walls and shading his skin, spilling a shock-shine onto hands finger-threading together.<br/>
<br/>
He took one glance up and found his vision swimming, blurring, the lights with their pale glow morphing, muddling up, a sparking-violent morass.<br/>
<br/>
A single flickering bulb casting sickly shades around a shack stinking of offal and caged fear.<br/>
<br/>
He hasn’t looked up since.<br/>
<br/>
He has half a mind to climb out of the bed and book it for the entrance. The space feels as confining and cramped as it did in the shack. He hates it. He wants out.<br/>
<br/>
His brain, for once, cannot dredge up a solution fast enough. Getting past the hospital staff, the doctors and nurses and receptionist; it all strikes as <em>too much.</em> A haze has yet caught up his thoughts, snagged them down to a snail's sluggish pace.<br/>
<br/>
It’s with this calm—a calm to stun, a calm to disturb, a calm to gentle his mind to the point of slow and steady in lieu of the frenzy it’s usually held prisoner within—that Spencer registers the door snicking open. It swings on hinges well-oiled, near-silent. Turning to greet the visitor blooms into a bubble and bursts, a notion needle-plunged into a vein, direct, debilitating, dissipating. He slumps lower in the bed and stares at the vase of flowers—lilies, violets, cherry blossoms—spilling color-ripe artifice out onto the bland tan nightstand.<br/>
<br/>
The voice that carries on over a tide of still air is unexpected and strums his nerves to surprised.<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t play at being asleep, Pretty Boy, we’ve got some catchin’ up to do.”<br/>
<br/>
His head jerks up, snaps to the right. And no, his ears don't decieve. Standing there, eyes sad-soft, with a smile Spencer has looked to more than once for support and reassurance, is—<br/>
<br/>
“Derek.” It feels ridiculous, or perhaps not, to find some strength—feeble though it may be—sinking into him. Strength borrowed from the stance radiating determined-protective, from the bone-deep certainty Spencer holds, how he knows, knows, absolutely <em>knows</em> that nothing will see him harmed so long as Morgan is there.<br/>
<br/>
So he sits himself up as best as he can and says, tired and drained, stumbling through his words with a tongue lost to the whims of drugstore heroin: “I thought it would be Hotch.”<br/>
<br/>
Hotch, for whom he left the clue in a bible verse misaimed on purpose. Hotch, who he embraced, voice a rasp of weak relief.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I knew you’d understand.<br/>
</em><br/>
He's not surprised. Hotch left just as swiftly as he arrived. Moreso, he is their Unit Chief, their leader. Spencer cannot stand to fathom what awaits him in the form of Strauss most-likely taking him to task, of the superiors he has to explain this all to, of the aftermath beyond what he is currently processing.<br/>
<br/>
Dimly, he spares thought to what his own file will say. If it will list the array of indignities dealt to him. Kidnapped, beaten, made to play a false God in the hopes of a victim being saved. He can bear that.<br/>
<br/>
But the drugging—<br/>
<br/>
His mind, his gift, weapon and shield, sword and shelter, made useless and pliant and murky with his bloodstream singing blessed-cursed-calm—<br/>
<br/>
It hurts. His hands form fists overtop the sheets and he objects not one whit when Morgan drops into a chair and splays a hand over both of his. There’s that strength again, and Spencer lets it weave its way within until a small tremulous smile wisps across his lips.<br/>
<br/>
Tears, however, he is ashamed to shed. They gather at the corners of his eyes and spill forth, but he simply sighs. Builds up his walls with just a touch more of adamantine instead of steel and prays that they won’t be called to attention. If anyone understands the sanctity of secrecy, privacy, dignity, it’s Morgan.<br/>
<br/>
“He’s not big on missing out on your reception. Had to call in and inform the big-wigs that everything’s gotten settled, and then <em>that</em> spiraled out of control. Think they want to tear his hide out or just tear him a new one, so JJ tagged along to help smooth things over.” The words are neither a balm nor an irritant; Spencer suspected as much. “He’d be here if he could, promise.”<br/>
<br/>
Spencer nods. “I know.”<br/>
<br/>
For a handful of beats, all is still, deep silence complete. It's peaceful. Braces him up against something more than a hospital bed all-too rigid, something firm, soothing, resolute.<br/>
<br/>
He gives Morgan’s hand a squeeze and takes quiet comfort in the steady-sure grip that answers him.<br/>
<br/>
Silence that gains a hairline crack when a new voice wafts on in from the doorway. “Let’s not make it a party without me. Don’t leave me out of the fun, guys.”<br/>
<br/>
Emily strides in, and her steps are conviction grounded upon concern, and Spencer weighs his dignity with his exhaustion, decides it doesn’t matter, and blurts out, “Is it ever a party if you’re not around?”<br/>
<br/>
It’s more offhand than it should be, but Emily is still too new and the ache of Elle’s departure smarts, fresh and sharp. Nonetheless, he extends an arm and gestures to another chair. If that hand trembles just a touch, fine tremors filtering through skin yet ashen and paler than pale itself, it goes unsaid and unquestioned.</p>
<p>Some things have no need for explanation and they all know it.<br/>
<br/>
The second the brush of prim sensible red button-up fabric bursts up against plain pleather, Spencer feels his eyes sliding shut. Weariness hangs, a funeral shroud clinging to his bones. Mustering the strength and willpower to not give in then and there ranks as a Herculean task. His body is flagging <em>fast</em>.<br/>
<br/>
“Don't—” Emily’s voice, and it’s as firm-gentle as he’s ever heard it in their short time spent together as colleagues, but it isn’t Morgan’s. Yet it seems as if crafted out of the same iron as his. Spencer cracks his eyes open enough to set them to slanting slivers.<br/>
<br/>
Once it's apparent that his attention has been sought and caught, she stretches out a hand and rests it above both of theirs. Warmth buoyed up by resolve. That alone makes his smile just a little less shaky.<br/>
<br/>
It isn’t enough to take down the walls he’s built up over his whole life, but that’s to be expected. A safeguard of sorts, because too much trust, too much confidence in another—<br/>
<br/>
It can’t end well. Not always. That much proved itself already: he forewent JJ keeping guard at his back and paid the price. Nobody to blame but himself. His own (over)confidence backfired on him and left him stagger-crashing in the lurch.</p>
<p>A mark has been left in the wake of his failings. A bruise. One that's bruising still, spreading supermassive, a rockslide-tumble of humiliation-exhaustion-anger atop what’s already bowing down his shoulders.</p>
<p>No, indeed, nowhere near enough to bring down his walls. Walls shoring up higher with adamantine rather than steel and made all the more stubborn for it. Walls that may soon tower, unyielding and absolute, obstacle immortal.<br/>
<br/>
But it’s a start.<br/>
<br/>
Emily tells him, “Don’t hold out, not here, not now. You don’t have to anymore. Go to sleep, we’ll be here when you wake.”<br/>
<br/>
It just about does the trick, but he manages to stay afloat until Morgan’s voice rolls on out, rich and stern and knowing in all of its rumble-timbre.<br/>
<br/>
“There ain’t anything out there gettin’ in here, now get that shut-eye. I don’t want to imagine Strauss hauling ass all the way here before we’re all ready for it. Not a dressing down I’d ever want to see in my lifetime.”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s not just you, you know.”<br/>
<br/>
And so, finally, Spencer slips shut his eyes and lets the wind of sleep drag him down and into oblivion-empty broken up by the wind of dreams.<br/>
<br/>
As damning as it is, with the drugs in his system and his thoughts tuned to the slow slither of molasses melting in the sun, it’s the best sleep he’s had in a long time.</p>
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